


Addiction

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur doesn't take things well, Darker!Merlin, Gen, M/M, Magic Reveal, Pre-Slash, Series 1, The Merlin torture never really stops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Merlin thinks he needs to sleep. </i>
</p>
<p><i>No, he </i>knows<i> he needs to sleep. He hasn’t since…when?</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Nobody can run for this long.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Addiction

Merlin thinks he needs to sleep. 

No, he _knows_ he needs to sleep. He hasn’t since…when?

Nobody can run for this long.

It’s hopeless though. Even as he thinks it – even as an optimistic mind and darting eyes start to search for somewhere to lie down and rest at last – he is already casting the spell for another burst of energy. That’s disorienting in itself: the draining sensation as the power leaves him, more acute than usual because he has so little left, so that he almost falls to the ground; the sudden nervous buzz that picks him up again, making his fingers twitch and the magic bubble in his veins; then the slow comedown that’s nearly worse, until he feels uneasy, jumpy, ready to move again, _has_ to move again.

Not very deep down he knows that he can’t keep this up. Sooner or later he is going to reach that balance where the energy taken is the same as that given. When that happens, he will have to rest, and then they will catch him. He knows this, knows that really he should use what he has left to find somewhere to hide, but the insistent new magic surging through him won’t let him. It wants to be used; it wants to keep moving, and he agrees too much to stop it.

Gaius warned him about something like this. About sorcerers who relied on their powers too much; who used them for _everything_ ; who ended up unable to live without them. They kept using magic until there was nothing left and then they started using their own life force, right up to the point of death and driving them over. Some of them _couldn’t_ stop, not even when they were wasting away or when Uther’s guards were pounding at their door. 

_Addiction_ , Gaius had called it. 

Two days on the run? Three? Merlin last slept back in Camelot, he can remember that, but the time since then has become strangely distorted, something other than what he’s used to. It rushes past with the wind only to slow down like mud, pulling him along and holding him back. Time is against him.

A root seems to rise up out of nowhere, catching his foot and sending him sprawling to the ground. For a moment he lies there, wondering if it could really be so bad to stop running. Then his treacherous mind conjures up a memory from somewhere back in the more fluid past.

“Merlin, nobody could ever possibly appreciate just how much I have had to suffer at the hands of the clumsiest, most useless manservant in the entire history of Camelot.”

That voice; the voice Merlin had sworn that he would never even think about again… 

It brings a wave of emotions with an energy of their own, lifting him up either normally or through magic (it became a little blurred after the first day) and sending him off running once more. Anything to get his mind back on track – which is the closest thing to a joke he has so much as thought lately.

How long are they going to hunt for him? Obviously Uther won’t give up easily, definitely not after a sorcerer has been discovered so deep within the royal household, yet surely his knights can’t keep this up? Not indefinitely? Surely at some point they have to return, train, fight, protect, and do the million other things Arthur had to—

At the thought of Arthur he stumbles again, this time as his magic suddenly wavers, sending an uncomfortable quiver through his veins. It’s not the first time it’s reacted to his emotions, but it’s disconcerting nonetheless, especially when he’s relying on it more heavily than he ever has before.

It had been stupid, of course. How had he missed that for so long? One smile from that arrogant blonde prat and it had been as if he couldn’t think anymore. No wonder everybody had thought he was an idiot. He is one.

It had all been Arthur’s fault really. 

No, Uther’s for giving Merlin the ‘honour’ of serving him, forcing him to spend all that time with him, something which apparently would turn anybody’s head. 

No, the dragon’s for all that talk of some special destiny, something grand and wonderful and, of course, impossible. Talk about building somebody’s hopes up.

In the end though, it really had been Arthur. First he had started acting as if there truly was a human being under all that posing, pretending there might be something going on other than your standard master/servant ‘do what I say or prepare for extreme unpleasantness because I’m the bloody prince’ relationship (Merlin’s mental voice of his former master had both a better and coarser vocabulary than the reality). Of course, it had turned out there was another layer underneath that deceit; something darker; something a little more realistic.

Maybe Merlin should be proud. Maybe he should feel some kind of triumph as he flees for his life, because he has discovered the truth: once you strip back everything, the boasts, the skills, the diplomacy, the emotions (faked or otherwise)…Arthur really is his father’s son. The son of a man who would do anything to wipe out magic for good; anything to ‘protect’ his kingdom.

And he’d bloody figured it out for himself, hadn’t he? All those hints and signs that Merlin had thought he’d been lucky enough to hide. Arthur had seen all of them, as he had been trained to do since birth. Along with that other vital skill Uther had deemed so important with regard to sorcerers.

What had taken him so long to engineer that grand ‘confrontation’ (as the rumours and later the tales would no doubt label it: the righteous prince against the deceitful warlock), Merlin would never know. Evidence? An opening? Wanting to savour holding that control over him? Or had he simply been waiting for Merlin to be enough of an idiot to trust him, to start to—

No. Those emotions, those feelings are dead now. They have to be. You can’t be on the run and still lo– be _fond_ of the one pursuing you.

He had saved Arthur’s life too many times to count. It was because of him that Merlin had kept on using that flashy impressive magic, not even trying the small subtle bursts Gaius had tried to suggest for weakening that urge to let it all out. In a way, that’s why he is so willing to use his magic to keep him going: because he’s not used to holding it back when he really wants to use it. All because of some destiny concocted by a desperate and manipulative dragon, and a pretty face. 

“Liar.” “Murderer.” Oh, that is rich coming from him. Besides, Merlin hadn’t been anything like Edwin Muirden or Sophia, skulking around and plotting grand assassinations or ‘machinations’, as Arthur (who apparently had a rather ostentatious way of phrasing things when he was truly being The Prince) had put it. Merlin had just been trying to live his life, and had dared to help Arthur live his a little longer.

Well, time for the Pendragons to find out what he has been holding back.

He will run for now. No chance of stopping now, not while he has got his magic keeping him going, the rushing sensation becoming more welcome and joyous and less frightening every time he summons it. He’ll hide himself away somewhere, maybe try to find the Druids, and practise every spell he can find, regardless of whether he would have once called it ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Perhaps he could even return to the Isle of the Blessed to see what the Old Religion can offer him.

There is no destiny, merely opportunity; no fair deals, only what the most powerful desire; no trust, purely performance. The dragon; Nimueh; Arthur. Who else to teach him such valuable lessons?

Another surge of energy, this one making him leap from stone to stone to cross a river which would have made him pause before but now only seems to follow the same magic flowing through him. How can he ever sleep? Even once he has properly made his escape, outrunning or otherwise dealing with Arthur’s (and really they are Arthur’s, not Uther’s) knights, there will be so much to do.

Edwin Muirden had shown Merlin and the king the potency of a long-held desire for revenge. Emrys will be worse, so, so much worse.

Camelot, and Arthur bloody Pendragon, will never forget him.


End file.
